ATHENS TOURS

Athens Sightseeing Tour

The tour starts with the Acropolis and the Parthenon, followed by the Theater of Herodes Atticus under the rock of Acropolis and is the best chance to see on stage an ancient Greek drama. During the Athens Festival there are many of world famous artists who perform at the ancient theater.It is an amazing experience on a warm Athens night to watch any display on that great Amphitheater.

Next to the Parliament, the National Garden and the Zappeion are places of interest a green oasis in the middle of the big city, walking through Zappeion you arrive opposite the Panathinaikon Stadium where the first modern Olympics took place in 1896. A few metres away towards Acropolis you have the monuments of the ancient temple of Olympic Zeus and the Adrianos Gate. At this point starts the Adrianou street which takes you through Plaka all the way down to Monastiraki with its flea market and Thission.

At the end of Andrianou street is the Ancient Agora and the Attalos stoa museum. Most of its exhibits are connected with the Athenian Democracy and this is the reason that the ceremony of the entrance in the European Union of the 10 new member countries at the spring of 2003 took place at the Attalos Stoa. Walking up the Agora you get to the peripheral road under the Acropolis walls. Another easy way to go up to Acropolis is taking the Dioskouron street parallel to the Agora and after a few steps you get there.

From this direction before you get to the main entrance is the rock of Arios Pagos the place where the Apostle Paul spoke to the Athenians, his speech is carved on a metal plate on the rock, it is worth climbing up the rock, the view of Athens and Piraeus especially during a full moon night is amazing but you should not wear high heeled shoes because the steps are uneven and slippery.

Athens is an entertaining city, some would say on a par with the great entertainment centers of the world. On any summer night there are outdoor concerts from your favorite rock stars to classical music, ballet, Byzantine music, and the Dora Stratou Dancers.

There are giant indoor-outdoor discos and clubs where the most famous Greek singers perform nightly to packed houses. In the winter Athens club scene comes alive with shows ranging from blues-rock-jazz to traditional Rembetika, laika and of course punk-rap and whatever is happening in the west.

The clubs are located around the city with many of the bars in Psiri, Gazi and other central areas. In the summer all the big clubs by the sea open up. These are discos and giant progressive techno clubs that hold thousands of people mostly outdoors where you can enjoy the night though some are indoors in giant converted warehouses.

In a maritime country like Greece, the god of the sea occupied a high position in the divine hierarchy. In power, Poseidon was considered second only to Zeus (Jupiter), the supreme god himself. His implacable wrath, manifested in the form of storms, was greatly feared by all mariners. In an age without mechanical power, storms very frequently resulted in shipwrecks and drownings.

The temple at Cape Sounion, Attica, therefore, was a venue where mariners, and also entire cities or states, could propitiate Poseidon by making animal sacrifice or leaving gifts.

The temple of Poseidon was constructed in 444–440 BC, over the ruins of a temple dating from the Archaic Period. It is perched above the sea at a height of almost 60 metres (200 ft). The design of the temple is a typical hexastyle, i.e., it had a front portico with six columns. Only some columns of the Sounion temple stand today, but when intact it would have closely resembled the contemporary and well-preserved Temple of Hephaestus beneath the Acropolis, which may have been designed by the same architect.

At the centre of the temple colonnade would have been the hall of worship (naos), a windowless rectangular room, similar to the partly intact hall at the Temple of Hephaestus. It would have contained, at one end facing the entrance, the cult image, a colossal, ceiling-height bronze statue of Poseidon. Probably covered in gold leaf, it may have resembled a contemporary representation of the god, appropriately found in a shipwreck, shown in the figure above. Poseidon was usually portrayed carrying atrident, the weapon he supposedly used to stir up storms. On the longest day of the year, the sun sets exactly in the middle of the caldera of the island of Patroklou, the extinct volcano that lies offshore, suggesting astrological significance for the siting of the temple. The temple of Poseidon was destroyed in 399 by Emperor Arcadius.